Scooter reviews the chances that his contending club in a 12-team, AL-only league has to win. It would be his first championship in 16 seasons. The keys include Corey Kluber, Byron Buxton and, probably, Kevin Kiermaier.

I have a shot at winning my deep AL-only league this year, something I haven’t managed to do in 15 previous seasons. I’m currently tied for second place, 8 ½ points behind the first-place team. I’m going to take a look at what needs to happen for me to win.

How has the big spike in home runs—which has been trending for more than 20 years—affects player values.

Earlier this year, I talked about how to adjust to starting pitchers not throwing nearly as many innings as they used to do. Today, I am going to look at the other change that has altered the fantasy landscape: the big spike in home runs.

All 2017 statistics in this article are for games played through Wednesday.

In a breakthrough campaign, Travis Shaw is having one of the top seasons of any third baseman in fantasy. Will he continue to be elite at the hot corner?

Travis Shaw wasn’t considered a hot fantasy commodity prior to this season. He was coming off a disappointing 2016, and owners weren’t quite sure what to expect following his move to Milwaukee. Shaw didn’t appear on Baseball Prospectus’ preseason tiered rankings, and he barely snuck in “The Top 300 for 2017.” However, as we approach the All-Star break, Shaw has been one of the most valuable fantasy assets at his position.

Last month, I introduced the Gini Coefficient, a statistic better known for measuring income inequality, as a way to measure inequality among home run hitters. The conclusion was that as home runs have become more prevalent, their distribution has become more equal: There is less inequality among home run hitters (measured by the Gini Coefficient for home runs among all batters with 50 or more plate appearances) than ever before, and inequality has steadily declined since the Babe Ruth-dominated 1920s. The record number of home runs in recent years has been the product of more and more batters hitting 20-plus, not a handful of standouts hitting 40, 50, or more.

I thought that was an interesting finding. By and large, there hasn’t been that kind of shift in baseball. Take strikeouts. You probably know that strikeouts have been steadily increasing, pretty much throughout baseball history. Here’s a chart showing the percentage of all strikeouts per season generated by the top strikeout hitters, where “top” is defined as the n players with the most strikeouts, and n equals the number of teams in the league (e.g. the top 16 through 1959 and top 30 since 1998):

I threw in a trendline for you, but you really don’t need it. The percentage of strikeouts generated by the “strikeout elite” has declined, but ever so slightly. It barely counts.

The Gini Coefficient for batter strikeouts concurs. It measures inequality on a scale from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality). As with my work with home runs, I’m using every player with 50 or more plate appearances in this analysis:

That’s not much of a trend. The distribution of strikeouts has remained pretty constant over the years. And that’s how most metrics worked. Singles? Pretty flat. Doubles? Becoming a little more equal, but at a very slow rate. Walks? Almost no change, year to year. Nothing I found is as dramatic as the increasing equality of home run hitters. Nobody dominates home runs in baseball the way Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Hack Wilson did in the late 1920s.

But I did find one area in which baseball is becoming less egalitarian rather than more: Speed. Of the traditional baseball stats, the two that correlate best to speed are triples and stolen bases. Yes, we have advanced stats, like BRR, but let’s concentrate on those that fans can see at the ballpark or on TV.

Let’s first look at the stolen bases by elite basestealers—again, I’m defining this as the top n basestealers per year, where n is the number of teams in the majors—as a percentage of all stolen bases.

That’s not a straight upward trend, the way the proportion of home runs hit by elite sluggers has been mostly straight down, but the direction is generally upward. Through 1930, the top 16 basestealers accounted for fewer than 30 percent of all stolen bases. The last time that occurred was 1941. That peak, when it topped 40 percent, fell mostly between 1958 and 1973, when stolen bases were in a long-term trough (the only years with fewer than 0.5 stolen bases per team per game were 1930-1972) and a few basestealers (notably Lou Brock, Bert Campaneris, Maury Wills, and Luis Aparicio) were dominant.

The gradual concentration of base stealing among an elite handful of players is reflected in the Gini Coefficient as well.

Stolen bases have always been the province of a handful of players; the low-water Gini Coefficient of 0.64 in 1920 isn’t really all that low. But while recent years are more egalitarian than the 1950s-1960s peak of inequality, the general trend is that stolen bases are becoming more unequal, not less.

Why should that be? Well, stolen bases, unlike most batting outcomes, include a measure of discretion. Batters don’t look into the dugout to see if the manager is flashing the “hit a home run” sign. Hitters don’t think that taking a walk isn’t worth the risk if their team’s trailing by four in the late innings. While some base stealers have a permanent green light, most are sent at the discretion of their coaches.

Yet, despite cries that base stealing is lost art (cries that are not something new), and evidence that teams are not attempting steals as often as they should, stolen base attempts are not out of line with historical averages:

So what’s going on? I think it’s a combination of two factors. First, managers are more aware of run and win expectancies than they were in the past, so they’re less likely to call for a stolen base when they are more likely to result in the loss of a precious out. Here’s a graph of stolen base success rates:

When you’re being judicious in attempting steals, you’re going to concentrate your attempts with your very best base stealers.

The second factor is, again, run and win expectancy tables, but from the point of view of the batter rather than the baserunner. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to send Jonathan Villar when Eric Thames is at the plate, since a dinger will score Villar from first base just as easily as from second base. In a rising run environment, stolen bases are less valuable on the margin—you might as well stay put and wait for someone to drive you in—making their value, again, less appealing for all but the best basestealers.

Triples, though, are another story. Yes, there are situations when a runner doesn’t want to risk stretching a double, but for the most part, triples are the outcome of skill, not choice. And the concentration of triples among the top hitters is indisputable.

Like stolen bases, this was a pretty concentrated distribution in the first place. But it’s become more concentrated as the years have gone by (even though there have been some incongruous leaders).

Inequality in baseball? There’s not much evidence of it when players have bats in their hands. But once they start running, things become much more stratified. Billy Hamilton, Dee Gordon, and Trea Turner (top three in stolen bases, among league leaders in triples) are in the contemporary baserunning one percent.

Andrelton Simmons has been getting results—and showing other signs—that he's having a career season in fantasy.

For years, baseball fans have been in awe of Andrelton Simmons’ defensive ability at shortstop. However, for fantasy purposes, there never were many reasons to pay attention to him given his production at the plate. Hardly anyone came into this season expecting Simmons to be an option for their fantasy roster. Baseball Prospectus didn't even list Simmons on its initial “Fantasy Tiered Rankings: Shortstop,” and he went undrafted in most leagues.

As we sit here in the first week of June, something interesting has been happening with Simmons. He’s been a fringe top-15 shortstop, and he’s slowly raising his fantasy profile. Simmons is providing owners with positive value, if minimal, in every standard fantasy category.

Helping you avoid fantasy pitfalls associated with the decrease in steals around the league in recent years.

Stolen bases and stolen base attempts are down over the past 10 years and are so particularly over the past five years. The graph below shows league-wide totals for stolen bases, caught stealing, and stolen base attempts from 2007 to 2016 by year.

While home run totals have experienced a meteoric rise over the past two seasons, stolen bases have followed an inverse trend, especially during the last five years. Here’s an oversimplification: After major-league teams swiped just 2,505 bases in 2015, the lowest single-season total since 1974, they managed just 2,537 thefts league-wide in 2016.

A look at how the first-year skippers have utilized the running game to this point in the season.

New managers don’t matter too much in terms of fantasy baseball. They won’t magically improve starting rotations or increase their team’s respective power production. The one exception, though, can be on the base paths. In other words, it’s important to ask: Is a manager running more or less than his predecessor did?

Evidence that stolen bases are improperly valued in fantasy circles, and ideas on how to fix a steal-lacking squad via trade.

With the exception of saves, stolen bases are the category most likely to make people moan and groan in fantasy baseball. The value of the stolen base is disproportionate to what it is in real life, which generates a great deal of frustration when it comes to constructing teams in roto leagues. Some go as far to suggest that the solution is to play in a (shudder) points league.

Two common beliefs among fantasy players are that: 1) stolen bases are not all that valuable and 2) stolen bases can found easily on the free agent pool. In this article, I will examine both of these perceptions and see how well they hold up under scrutiny.

As the Baseball Prospectus Fantasy Team boldly pushes forward in our Fantasy Categorical Breakdowns series, be sure to catch up with previous installments over the past couple of weeks. J.P. Breen kicked off our stolen-base series with a look at the league-wide decline in thefts, as only seven hitters eclipsed the 30-steal plateau this past season. Tomorrow, noted Mallex Smith enthusiast, Greg Wellemeyer will take a deep dive into the category at the next generation of speedsters that will pilfer our hearts and inhabit our dynasty rosters. Today’s article focuses on the mixed league relevant roadrunners, ranging from the games elites, to five intriguing names to watch, a rebound and regression candidate and finally a breakdown of the specialists capable of infusing your fantasy roster with the speed you covet in 2016.

The Gold Standards (Stolen base kings worth every last dollar in 2016)

As the BP Fantasy Team boldly pushes forward in our Fantasy Categorical Breakdowns series, be sure to catch up with previous installments over the past couple of weeks. We’re providing a 10,000-foot view of each category—such as this article here—to go with a specific article on 2015 over/underachievers and another one targeted for deeper leagues. This series is tackling two birds with one stone: (1) breaking down individual player performances; and (2) re-calibrating the fantasy discussion by placing roster strategy at the center.